You Say One Thing...Mean Another! -2-

If someone told you the
Department of Justice
was poking around,
wouldn't you have a few
hundred questions?
"What are they asking?"
Yeah, I agree, dumb question,
but I had to start somewhere,
and as I walked across the tarmac,
the conversation ran through my mind, his
twinkled eyed answer answer had been nearly curt;
"your supposed to be good at finding things out?"

Now as my other associates plane came into
view, the conversation kept nagging at me,
because it was strange.  It wasn't that he
was tense, it was that he was deliberately
not telling me some things, which in that
he didn't hide that fact, meant he was
sending me off on a mission with very
few supplies?  Alas we all go there someday.

So as Bert came into view, my mind was
racing a bit, as I knew exactly what Mr. Politic,
had in mind, if my connections were used
right, I'd work back to those questions
myself, and he'd know what he wanted to know.

Bert was a challenging person, his very presence
was one that evoked something, he is big, not
just large, but, fit; you could put my 5'8", 190
pound, next to Bert and you'd see it instantly.
He dwarfed me, and yet, he was not the sort
of large person whom you felt you could
hug like a Teddy Bear and survive the hug?
My guess was 6'5", about 230, but I'd never
asked, wasn't necessary, when you were in
Bert's presence, you realized size had ceased
being the issue, and was he going to attack
or not, became the central point.

"Yo Bert,"  Friendly, smiling, a good greeting...
"Well, look at what the cats set loose, what's
up Chuck..."  Bert, always quick with the wit.
"Bert how long you been parkin' your Cessna
out here?"
"Cessna, son, something wrong with your vision?
This is a ways up the ladder from one of those
hoppers." He touched the fuselage, "it's O.K.
Gina, he just don't know what he's talkin' about
when it comes to splendor?"
"Huh?"
"Wrong make there Chuck ol buddy- this here's
a full blown, 100% Comanche, best of the line,
top of the release.."  As he continued I realized
that I'd set him off...he was proud of the plane,
that was obvious, so I tried on the breath to
get in another opening question.
"Sorry Bert, you're right, I don't know much
about planes."
And he was off to the races again, only this time
it was me not knowing what I was looking at,
and once again, the pedigree speech, well
third times a charm, nothing ventured?
"Yeah, Bert, got it," back to square one here,
"how long have you been parking the plane
out here?"
Now there's a good question, but
I wasn't expecting his answer.
"Writin' a book Chuck?"
"Well, uh, no, just wondering?"
"Why you wondering?"  No aggression
just standing there against the plane asking.
"Bert, easy, your my bud, just curious, I don'
know much about this place, don't come out
here, just looking for some history a little
and I know you a bit."
That seemed to relax him a bit, although I
was still a bit taken aback, was he paranoid?

Bert was an associate, someone I knew at a
distance, but, knew; had been knowing for
decades now.  Weird rumors hung around
Bert like bad air over a crowded city; and
while my teeth testified to the fact that I'd
never been stupid enough to try and confirm
or deny them directly with the big man;
nevertheless they were there.  One thing I
did know personally, some decades back
when we'd worked on a pretty simple
project, Bert had decided it needed to go
one way, and the group had decided it
needed to go another, and Bert had let
them know, very deliberately, very,
meanly (must be a word, sure describes
what happened) that he wasn't going to
allow things to go any other way.  Folks
here about call that a temper?  Bert was
also rumored to have used that temper
with family, and wife, and it wasn't kind,
and those rumors were the ones I for
sure would not ask about, which is why
my teeth weren't in any danger, see?

"How long you been around these parts
Chuck?"
"Since 1980,"
"Where'd you come from?"
"Colorado..."
"My Lord," Bert loved euphemisms,
"had no idea about you, hope you
don't mind the questions, we've
never really chatted much?  Always
been business this, business that."
"That's our lives Bert, we don't have
time for much with any meaning."
It was a point everybody had been
noticing lately, how time had been
seeming to compress, be going
faster, as if that were possible?
"So, what's this history thing you're
talking about and my parking my
plane here?"
"Yeah, well, this airport hasn't
always been here, has it?"
"You mean was it built for a specific
reason, like a downtown extension?"
"There you go,"
"Near as I can figure, originally this land
belonged to one family, years back,
in the mid 60s, I hear that their farm
was doing real well, this was their farm
area here, anyway, I heard they had
this strip put in to bring in crop dusters
for their fields, and the surrounding
farmers who wanted dusting."
"Mid sixties, so it's about 40 years old?"
"Something like that, why, whats up?"
"Oh, it's just that the area here is growing,
and also, we've got lots of materials
that are being handled in the area, and
this strip is nice sized, but it's not called
a full blown airport by the FAA?"
"That's right, this is called a division
sized, but, that's cool as far as our rent
on storage areas goes, that fixin' to change?"
"Oh I wouldn't give it much thought Bert,
it won't happen anytime soon, but we
would all benefit from a regular sized
landing strip, and we may have the chance
to get one?"
"Well, if that happens, I only hope the
powers that be give us old timers a chance
to hold off on that high rent?"
"Sure shouldn't be a problem."
"So what else you got on your mind Chuck,
you don't come around much..."
It wasn't gnawing at me yet, but it was coming.
Had it just been coincidence that I'd
found him at the hangar?  Or had I
been sent there like a heat seeking
missile, find the heat, miss the fire?
Did I dare go into the meat of the matter
with him?  For that matter, did I even
know what sort of meat we was fixin' to eat?

Bite Off More Than You Can Chew? -1-

"It matters to me, a whole lot."
If sparks could've shot out his eyes-
"How can you say that, seeing as how..."
Then my eyes would've reflected them back-
"I can say it, and I do say it, because..."
"Look you have to slow down a bit, that's all,"
"If that's all, well, shoot let's just
sit down and really slow down..."
"O.K., maybe that was a bit simple,
but you know what I'm saying,
you just haven't thought through
some of these things?" Ah my blue
eyed friend wasn't really wanting to
hear his brown eyed boy come
up with that one.
"Man," and here's where he blew my mind, "I don't
even know what things to think through?"  That's
when it occurred to me, "son you may have bitten
off more than you can chew."

The picture is really a pretty funny one, kid sittin'
there with potato, stuffed so full up in his mouth,
that if he could get the milk in there, it wouldn't
help- and he's about to gag, and tears are beginning

to break on his eyes, it's so dry it's
painful, and all he wants is a drink,
but he can't spit them out,
and he can't get the drink in?
Darned if you do,
and darned if you don't;
what a spot to be in?
So that bit about size not mattering-
don't buy it, somehow the bigger dudes,
both of us being men shorter than six foot;
big dudes, well, they have those mouths
that seem to be able to hold it all, don't they?
But our boy, he ain' all that big -
so, he's in a real tough spot.
He should have known the food
would be there after the next forkful,
but when you're really hungry?

My long time associate, who became a fairly powerful
politician; knew that the weak link in the whole idea
was that the community had no plan.
"Well, you guys have this as part of the plan, don't you?"
I was asking because it seemed important, after all,
we've all heard, haven't we, that if you don't plan,
then you plan to ...
"No," and he said it with that air that says, "I'm going
to say more..."  "We don't have a plan for the next
ten years, in fact, we don't have a plan at all, that
I know of..."
You can imagine that I was perplexed, thinking that
it just made good sense for a community to be
planned?  Thinking, like all reasonable people,
that government would have a plan, right?
"So let me get this straight - you have no strategy
for the future, for this community?"
"That's what I'm sayin'"  You can imagine my
reaction to that?  Or maybe you can't, because
you really don't know enough about me and
what I do, to make such a thought, or about my
associate, and what he is supposed to do; but one
thing you know now, they weren't ready, they
had no plan, now that creates the question,
what might that mean?  Why wouldn't they
have such a plan?  Be following some course
to the future?  Seemed odd to me?

It wasn't going to do me any good to explain to
my associate that there are two problems with
planning, one is long term and one is short
term; because if you have those two together,
the middle tends to work itself out?  Or that
the person who taught me how to do planning
was a NASA project director, a Disney project
director, for their theme parks, and had done
numerous other project plans, all of which had
been enormous, and therefore, enormously
detailed.  It also wouldn't do much good to
let him know that this far into the life of the
death of the community, it was going to be hard
to find a pulse, much less, establish a steady heartbeat?
None of that would help my associate, what
would you have told him?  Here's where I went.

"If you do nothing, what will happen?"  Seemed
like a reasonable place to put down a peg?  Gonna
put a tent up, might be nice to put that first peg
down, don't you think?  I remember when my
step-dad, who used to beat me regularly after
drinking some Whiskey, would take me and
my cousin up to the hills of California, to
"camp."  What he meant was you boys all of
seven and eight, go wander around the forest
and maybe get eaten by a bear, me I'm gonna
stay here in the tent and get hosed.  So he'd
say- "well where should we set that corner,
it's important to set the corner right, don't you
think?"  We'd seen him take about four snorts
on the way up, and while my cousin hadn't seen
him go off on me, he'd seen the year of bruises
showing up, enough to know he didn't want
any of it, his pupils expanded a bit with the
adrenalin, there was this weird understanding;
we'd better answer this one right?  "Yes sir,"
we'd done it in unison, who says, the Army
isn't one where fear creates union?  Oh yeah,
where you set the peg is important!  So there
I was suggesting to my friend that it might be
good to think about where to start, or even if
it was wise to start?  

He thought about the question, it wasn't a deep
one, necessarily, but he'd thought about it a good
bit, you could tell.  "If we do nothing, things aren't
going to be good around here in a couple of years."
He was starting to look down the road, see, it's
not hard to get folks looking there, it just takes a
few well aimed well timed and well seasoned
questions?  And maybe a step-dad who beats you
in your past, sets that up?  Something in his odd
blue eyes and set of jaw told me he didn't have
that, which I'd known anyhow, since I'd known
his dad, who was an incredible example of good
dad, a man who could outwork, out sweat and
flat out think most everybody, who went to war
instead of any other options.  So my brown haired,
blue eyed buddy was moving his mind down the
highway, a hard place to get people to move
their minds lately; seems folks are getting more and
more short sighted, less and less likely to think
about the future much, and; folks seem more scared
about the future than perhaps I'd ever known?

"So you want to bring me on board to help with
the planning you need to do?"
"No we've got that covered, I need you to do
something else."
Now he had my attention, something else's weren't
my usual.
"I need someone I can trust, someone I've known
long enough to know they won't sell me out."
"Not many of those types around you, are there?"
My observation was so cliche neither of us
really wanted to even bring it into the talk, so why
had I?
"It's not even that, this goes deeper than that?"
"In what way?"
"I'm not certain Chuck, in fact, this whole thing has
only recently become something of a front burner
issue?"
"Issue?"
"Well we've done some things with making life
in our town here, better.  Folks are starting to see
some good changes in the quality of the life we
lead."  He paused, but not for effect, it seemed he
was going through a list in his mind maybe?
"When we started on this water project, nobody
could see it, but me; and a couple of the the really
hooked in leaders; but we stuck it out, hired the
right people to do the paperwork, got the money,
and now we have a water system coming in that
is truly, remarkable."
"Do tell?"
"And after this last election, folk in the town
seem to be saying that they are looking for some
new ideas."
"Not a single returning member to the council,
you think?"
"Except me."
"Goes without sayin'"
He sat back in the chair, hooked his fingers into
a link on his chest, and nodded affirmatively.
"So when the deal about the airport came up,
I thought, "just makes good sense."  After all
we need a new airport, other towns our size,
get them, so it just seemed to make good sense
that if some folks said that they wanted to
have improvements to the existing airport, why
not?"
"Hey, you're talking job to me, remember, you
don't have to explain..."
"Naw, that's not it, you get it, but just like me, it
doesn't seem troublesome, does it?"
"Seems ...right?"  Well there it was, my brilliance
and deep analysis of Sun Tzu shining through.
"That is why the call from Justice was so," he
paused briefly, choosing the word, or words, "out
of place."